Blue Gate Farm News – Volume XI, Number 3  –  April  2010

 

 

Weather notes:

Precipitation in March: Rain 1.25”    Snow - 6”

       

What’s up on the farm?

Spring is officially on the run here in southern Iowa.  The grass is green (and already needs mowing for the second time this month) the birds are singing and we are planting like mad people.

 

Planting potatoes is always the single biggest spring deadline. Good Friday is the traditional planting date here in the Midwest and we did actually get about 300 row feet planted that day before a storm rolled through.  It was exciting because we miss this target date more years than not due to the weather and soil conditions.  We finished the project about a week ago with a total of about 1,000 row feet planted.  We are looking forward to a great potato season this year.

 

There are lots of other things happening in gardens at this time of year.  The beds are being prepped (composted and tilled for sowing and transplanting).  The early seedings are nearly complete including: radishes, green onions, kohlrabi, spinach, turnips, peas, beets and mustard.  We just started the official transplanting yesterday with 6oo row feet of onions.  We hope to finish up with the remaining onions, leeks and shallots today.  The cabbages and broccoli should go in the ground by the end of the week.

 

The high tunnels are filling rapidly.  The smaller tunnel is the transitional home for transplants hardening off for their move out to the gardens.  The big tunnel is full of the earliest crops of chard, salad greens, choi, radishes, spinach and arugula.  Still a little hard to believe that soon they will both be bursting with heat loving plants like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.  The final big push for sowing transplants will take place this week, adding cucumbers, summer squashes and okra to the green, leafy jungle of the sunroom.

 

The chickens are truly embracing the warm spring weather.  Their diet is now rich in juicy green grasses and you can really see the difference in the deep golden color of their egg yolks.  We are currently getting about ten dozen eggs a day which is a heck of a lot of eggs for our farm.  We are looking forward to the market and CSA season starting so that we can share these beauties with our customers/members.

 

Blue and Luci continue to be the best entertainment on the farm.  Blue is always asserting her authority, but Luci remains undaunted and ever enthusiastic.  They have thoroughly bonded and have great fun playing and wrestling together.  As I write this they are just outside the office window playing tug-of-war with a toy made of old strips of denim.

 

IMMIGRATION ALERT: late last week the honeybee population at BGF jumped by over 120,000 bees in a single day!  The first wave of new bee packages (approximately 10,000 bees and one queen in a 3 lb package) arrived last week and have been installed in new hive boxes.  An inspection yesterday revealed much comb being drawn and several colonies already with eggs!  The second wave of packages arrives later this week (another population spike of some 70,000 bees).  The new arrivals will focus on building out the architecture of their hives, raising lots of brood and putting up stores for the winter.  We don’t plan to harvest honey from these new hives unless they go just gang-busters.

 

Our bee colonies that survived the winter are looking healthy and building up their populations – these will be the hives we look to produce excess honey we’ll harvest for CSA and market.   Dandelions and wild plum are blooming in abundance and are active nectar sources for the bees.  All told, by end of April we should have 30+ hives pollinating our farm as well as the farms of several family members and friends (spreading out our hives across two different counties mitigates potential loss due to strong weather, predators, and pesticide drift – it also helps guarantee plenty of nectar for all of them).

 

We still anticipate the first CSA delivery of the 2010 season to be the last week of May or first week of June. Between now and that time we will have one more monthly newsletter.  Once deliveries begin, the newsletter will be emailed to you weekly and include information about the box contents and recipes.

 

We plan to have a new member orientation on Tuesday, May 18th at Ritual Café (our DM pick-up location) and on Wednesday, May 19th on the farm for our southern Iowa members.  Times for both of these events will be around 5:30pm, but details will follow later.  If you are joining us for the first time this season, please try to attend one of these events. They will provide lots of helpful information that we feel will make your CSA experience more enjoyable.

 

Membership account statements were sent out yesterday via e-mail.  If you did not receive a statement please let me know.  Payments are due May 1st.   Please contact us if you foresee an issue paying your balance due by May 1st so we can discuss arrangements. 

 

That’s about it this month, if you have any questions or comments be sure to let us know. 

 

Best from the farm,

Jill & Sean (and Blue & Luci)